Jewish Bucharest

Churches with spiers clad in tin by Jews, merchants with shops rented from Orthodox monasteries and rulers who borrowed money from the same Jews. Romanian literati on scholarship from Jewish funds, or hundreds of thousands of Romanians treated annually in a hospital donated to the Romanian state by a Jew. All of them are part of the national history, being part of the heritage left by the Jewish community (Felicia Waldman).

In Bucharest, Jews come to be mentioned for the first time in documents, as a presence in the city, especially in its trade, at 1550, less than a hundred years after the first mention of the city (1459). These early references describe Jewish merchants, eventually settled in Wallachia (former Romania) and Moldova, engaging in commerce and diplomacy. By 1559, a second document confirmed their continued presence, marking the beginnings of a stable Jewish community in the region.

Initially the jewish were living in the Lipscani area – Unirii. We are talking in the first phase – from 1550 to the end of the XVII-th century, even at the beginning of the XVIII-th century – exclusively. From there the Jews spread to the Union area and further into what became the Jewish Quarter in the late nineteenth century and early XX century, namely Dudesti, Vacaresti, Calea Mosilor, which were Jewish neighborhoods.

We will explore together the history and evolution of the jewish community in Bucharest.